Braintree Red Line Suspension Expands This Weekend

MASSACHUSETTS — Frequent riders of the Ashmont branch MBTA line will, unfortunately, get a taste of what Braintree riders have been experiencing this month.

The MBTA announced that the ongoing Red Line suspension will extend to Ashmont on Saturday while officials perform work there.

"The expansion of this service suspension to include the Ashmont Branch allows work crews to take advantage of construction equipment in the area and perform critical track work to remove a speed restriction on the Ashmont Branch," officials said.

They continued:

"The MBTA will also maximize this service outage by performing additional work, including proactive overhead tunnel inspections within the Ashmont Branch’s tunnel areas, seeking out any possible water infiltration or structural repair needs with crews on standby to make repairs as needed. Tunnel inspections were performed prior to resuming service after last weekend’s water main break, and we are maximizing this outage to perform another round of inspections."

The suspension is set to end on Sept. 30.

Officials said the month-long suspension was needed so they could make repairs to 18 miles of track, removing over 20 speed restrictions between JFK/UMass and Braintree.

These fixes, officials say, should cut as much as 24 minutes off roundtrip travel times from the location.